PETER F. DRUCKER

These assertions are not particularly new or particularly striking. But they have far-reaching implications.

Managers must accept the need to work systematically on making the future. But this does not mean the manager can work for the elimination of risks and uncertainties. That power is not given to mortal man. The one thing he or she can try to do is to find, and occasionally to create, the right risk and to exploit uncertainty. The purpose of the work on making the future is not to decide what should be done tomorrow, but what should be done today to have a tomorrow.

We are slowly learning how to do this work systematically and with direction and control. The starting point is the realization that there are two different, though complementary, approaches:

There is a time lag between a major social, economic, or cultural event and its full impact. A sharp rise or a sharp drop in the birthrate will not have an effect on the size of the available labor force for fifteen to twenty years. But the change has al-ready happened. Only catastrophe—destructive war, famine, or pandemic—could alter its impact tomorrow.

These are the opportunities of the future that has already happened. They might therefore be called a potential. But the future that has already happened is not within the present organization; it is outside: a change in society, knowledge, culture, industry, or economic structure.

It is, moreover, a major change rather than a trend, a break in the pattern rather than a variation within it. There is, of course, considerable uncertainty and risk in committing resources to anticipation. But the risk is limited. We cannot really know how fast the impact will occur. But that it will occur, we can say with a high degree of assurance; and we can, to a useful extent, describe it.

Fundamental knowledge has to be available today to be able to serve us ten or fifteen years hence. In the mid-nineteenth century one could only speculate about the consequences for the economy of Michael Faraday’s discoveries in electricity. A good many of the speculations were undoubtedly wide of the mark. But that this breakthrough into an entirely new field of energy would have major impact could be said with some certainty.

Another field that always should be searched for a future that has already happened is that of knowledge. This search should not, however, be confined to the present knowledge areas of the organization. In looking for the future, we assume that, say, the business will be different. And one of the major areas in which we may be able to anticipate a different business is that of the knowledge resource on which the specific excellence of a business is founded. We must, therefore, look at major knowledge areas, whether they have a direct relation to the present business or not. And wherever we find a fundamental change that has not yet had major impact, we should ask, “Are there opportunities here that we should and could anticipate?”

The behavioral sciences provide an example of a major change in a knowledge area, although few businesses would consider it directly relevant to them. Learning theory is one area in psychology where really new knowledge has been developed these last seventy-five years. Although this may seem rather remote to managers, the new knowledge is likely to have an impact not only on the form and content of education but on teaching and learning materials, school equipment, school design, and even on research organization and research management.

One also looks at other industries, other countries, other markets, with the question, Has anything happened there that might establish a pattern for our industry, our country, our market?

One such change—well in progress throughout the entire industrial world—is the materials revolution, which erases or blurs the lines that traditionally separated different materials streams. Only a generation ago materials streams were separate from beginning to end. Paper, for instance, was the main manufactured material into which wood could be converted. Paper, in turn, had to be made from a tree. The same situation held for other major materials—aluminum and petroleum, steel and zinc. Most of the finished products coming out of these material streams had specific and unique end-uses. In other words, most substances determined end-uses, and most end-uses determined substances. Today, however, even the process is no longer unique. The paper industry increasingly incorporates into their processes techniques developed by the plastics manufacturers and converters; and the textile industry increasingly adapts paper industry processes.

Inside the business, also, there can usually be found clues to events that, while basic and irreversible, have not yet had their full impact.

Often one indication is internal friction within the company. Something is being introduced—and it becomes a source of dissension. Unwittingly, one has touched a sensitive spot—sensitive often because the new activity is in anticipation of future changes and, therefore, in contradiction to the accepted pattern.

For example, in an American company, when product development is introduced as a new function and as a specific kind of work, it creates friction. Usually this manifests itself in a long wrangle as to where the new activity belongs. Does it be-long in marketing? Or does it belong in research and engineering? Actually, this is much less a dispute over the new function than it is a dim first awareness that the marketing approach tends to make all functions secondary and that all functions are cost centers rather than producers of results. This, however, must lead to fundamental changes in organization. It is the anticipation of these changes that makes people react violently to the symptom, “product development.”

Adapted from “Management: Tasks,Responsibilities,Practices”, P.113-121